Bureaucratic Professionalization is a Contagious Process Inside Government: Evidence from a Priming Experiment with 3,000 Chilean Civil Servants

• Published date: 01 March 2022
• Author: Kim Sass Mikkelsen,Christian Schuster,Jan‐Hinrik Meyer‐Sahling,Magdalena Rojas Wettig
• Date: 01 March 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13446

Research Article

290Public Administration Review • March | Apri l 202 2

Magdalena Rojas Wettig is an

international consultant for the

Inter-American Development Bank,

Expert of the Council for the Senior

Executive Service in Chile, advisor, and

professor. She has more than 12 years

of experience working as project leader,

professor, researcher, and consultant in

Public Management within International

Organizations, Universities, the public

and private sector. She was a Fulbright

Scholar and holds a Master of International

Affairs at Columbia University focused on

Economic and Political Development.

Email: murojas@uc.cl

Abstract: Education is at the center of theories of how bureaucracies professionalize. Going back to Weber, the process

toward a capable and professional bureaucracy has been viewed as driven by the entry of well-educated, professional

recruits. We argue that this perspective misses important dynamics within professionalizing bureaucracies—in

particular, how bureaucrats inside government react when bureaucracies professionalize. Building on this insight, we

argue that incumbent bureaucrats face incentives to acquire greater expertise when educated entrants arrive, in order

to remain competitive for organizational rewards (such as promotions) inside government and jobs outside government

in case educated entrants “outcompete” them. We provide empirical support for these propositions with a priming

experiment with 3,000 bureaucrats in Chile’s central government. Bureaucrats primed about the professionalization

of other bureaucrats put a greater premium on their own expertise acquisition. Our findings suggest that bureaucratic

professionalization is a contagious—and thus self-reinforcing—process inside government.

Evidence for Practice

• Merit recruitment practices can professionalize not just new recruits but also the existing workforce: Civil

servants face incentives to upskill in response to the entry of educated newcomers to remain competitive for

organizational rewards (such as promotions) and outside jobs

• Civil servants with attractive outside employment options are less susceptible to this effect.

• When implementing professionalization processes, reformers need to consider how the existing workforce

will react and how internal and external labor markets for civil servants will be affected

Education is essential to state development.

Among the core reasons for this is the role

education plays in the professionalization

of bureaucracies, the development of state

administrations into meritocratic, impartial,

and effective bureaucracies, as envisioned by

Max Weber(1978). Educational requirements

for bureaucratic entry were core to the

development of state apparatuses throughout

history (Fukuyama2011). Educated recruits

played central roles in turning often corrupt

and incompetent seventeenth and eighteenth

century royal administration onto the path to

well-functioning bureaucracies (Ertman1997;

Jensen2017; Silberman1993). Beyond historical

cases, the development of well-functioning pockets

of bureaucratic expertise from Singapore decades ago

(Klitgaard1988) to Ghana today (McDonnell2020)

is frequently ascribed in part to the entry of well-

educated recruits.

Yet, how skills development among already employed

bureaucrats—rather than the arrival of educated new

entrants—shapes the development of professional

bureaucracies has not taken center stage in theories

of professionalization. This is, both theoretically

and practically, an important omission. The share

of high-skilled jobs is increasing across public and

private sectors, emphasizing the need for continuous

workforce upskilling (World Bank2019) in a context

of increasing automation and complexity of public

sector tasks (cf. OECD2016). While longstanding

scholarship on the upskilling of public sector staff

exists (see, e.g., Carnevale and Carnevale1993),

theories of state professionalization are curiously silent

about in-house expertise development.

This article addresses this gap. We ask: How does the

entry of educated newcomers—a core component

of civil service professionalization—affect the

upskilling behavior of incumbent (already employed)

bureaucrats? We argue that the entry of educated

newcomers incentivizes incumbent bureaucrats to

develop expertise (or upskill; we use these terms

interchangeably). The core driver is bureaucratic

ambition (Teodoro2013). As education levels rise

among newcomers, incumbent bureaucrats are

incentivized to develop their own expertise to be

Kim Sass Mikkelsen

Christian Schuster

Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling

Magdalena Rojas Wettig

Bureaucratic Professionalization is a Contagious Process

Inside Government: Evidence from a Priming Experiment

with 3,000 Chilean Civil Servants

Roskilde University

University College London

University of Nottingham

Independent Consultant

Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling is a Professor

of Political Science at the University

of Nottingham, School of Politics and

International Relations. He holds a PhD

from the London School of Economics and

was a Max Weber Fellow and a Fernand

Braudel Senior Fellow at the European

University Institute in Florence. Prof

Meyer-Sahling’s work focuses on civil

service reform and public management in

Europe and in developing countries.

Email: j.meyer-sahling@nottingham.ac.uk

Christian Schuster is a Professor in Public

Management at University College London.

He is also the Co-Director of the Center

for People Analytics in Government and

Co-Founder of the Global Survey of Public

Servants. He has published extensively on

people analytics and people management

in government, with over 50 publications

in leading academic journals and policy

outlets. His latest co-authored book is

“Motivating Public Employees” (CUP

Elements Series).

Email: c.schuster@ucl.ac.uk

Kim Sass Mikkelsen is an Associate

Professor of Politics and Public

Administration at Roskilde University and

co-director of the Center for People Analytics

in Government. He has published in leading

journals within public administration

and management on a range of topics

including people management, rules and

administrative burden, and different forms

of ethical and unethical behavior.

Email: ksass@ruc.dk

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 82, Iss. 2, pp. 290–302. © 2021 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13446.